The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

toronto

Pizza Pizza is a chain restaurant that some readers outside of Canada might remember faintly from a line in a Moxy Fruvous song. No? All you need to know is that it’s a pizza chain, it delivers, and it has a 40-minute guarantee. If your pizza arrives in 41 minutes, it’s free. Simple enough: unless the driver gets mad about it. [More]

For more than five years now, we’ve reported on business owners’ allegations that review site Yelp makes shakedown calls, threatening to hide negative reviews if businesses pay up for advertising, and promising to hide positive ones if they do. A Toronto restaurant is just the latest business to make such claims, and took the allegations to that city’s subreddit. Only there’s no real proof. [More]

Magnets. They can be fun toys, cute souvenirs, useful money-saving tools, or a life-threatening health hazard. Yes, it’s rare, but a study that will soon be published in the Journal of Pediatrics shows that in the last decade, strong and tiny magnets have become popular, are marketed as toys, and injuries resulting from magnet consumption have increased. [More]

When you try to leave a store only to discover that you’ve been locked inside and no one is around to help, many thoughts may cross your mind. “I’ve got to tweet this” probably won’t be one of them, but you’re not the Canadian writer who spent a harrowing 45 minutes or so locked inside a Hudson’s Bay store in Toronto. [More]

Passions ran hot during the recent G20 summit and inevitable protests in Toronto. Riot police tromped, windows were smashed, monetary policy was set, and this would-be consumer screamed at the locked doors of the mall for a good two minutes demanding to be let in so he could exercise his inalienable right to shop and really show those capitalist pigs what for. [More]

Torontoist reader Charles claims to have received a used tube of Vaseline with his bagged slice of vegetarian pizza. He wrote:

Yes, this is how the slice came: a used and soiled “Convenience Size” bottle of Vaseline moisturizer, as found in a Pizza Pizza, bagged slice of pizza; purchased in-store at 8:30PM (EST) 23 February 2008, Yonge St near Bloor St (Toronto, Canada).

First Adam Plimer opens the door really quickly, hitting 75-year-old investigative reporter Peter Silverman in the head. Plimer screams, “Oh, I’m sorry, did I hit you?” Silverman puts his dukes up. Plimer dares Silverman to hit him in the face and shouts, “Go on, get the fuck out of here, I’m sick of you.” Seeing Plimer’s violence, Silverman tries to keep him in the store. Plimer breaks out and throws snowballs at the camera crew and a TCC inspector, yelling, “Get the fuck out of here.” The cops arrive. Plimer opens the door to shout the same obscenities at them. Then a sort of Canadian SWAT team arrives in riot gear. Eventually, they arrest Plimer.

Fantastic pack of commercials for “The World of Comedy International Film Festival.” Perfectly satirizes film festival preening, wherein artsy reporters intensely interview the makers of an a slapstick comedy as if they were auteurs.

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